


beneath the lightning and the moon

by eirabach



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Gen, Halloween, Submarines, things in the deep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:42:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27311359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eirabach/pseuds/eirabach
Summary: The Pendergasts have discovered... something.Shame it's not a kraken.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	beneath the lightning and the moon

“Sea monsters.” Scott pinches the bridge of his nose. “Actual sea monsters.“

“I know it sounds pretty crazy but –”

Buddy twists, his hologram beckoning out to someone out of frame, and Scott takes the opportunity to roll his eyes in Virgil’s vague direction. His actual view of his brother is blocked partially by the Pendergasts, but mostly by Gordon who’s leaning forward like an over excited pup facing the prospect of a particularly juicy bone.

“Ellie!”

“Hey, Gordo!” She waves. “Buddy filled you in?”

“Yeah!”

“Yeah, about that.” Scott holds a hand out, palm up, to keep Gordon from jumping right out of his seat. Just like puppy training. Kinda. “Thunderbird Five’s been scanning the area since you called it in, we can’t find anything untoward.”

“I know what I heard.” Buddy shakes his head. “Ellie took a recording, didn’t you love?”

“Sure did, hold on.” She taps at her tab, and Scott calls up John.

“This again?” he mutters, side eyeing the Pendergasts who are pressing their heads together over the tab. “I’ve run every scan –”

“Ah ha! Here, listen to this!”

Gordon practically falls off the sofa in his eagerness, Virgil catching at his belt loops to hold him in place. John is already turning away, his concentration already caught by something far more interesting than Buddy Pendergast’s –

“ _Report. Report_.”

“ _Crikey! Did you hear that? What in the_ –”

The roar that echoes round the villa has Gordon flying back in his seat, brings Alan to the top of the stairs with his fingers in his ears. It’s a deep, awful sort of sound, muffled by water and distance, but there’s a sharpness to it that reminds Scott of sheering, screaming metal. Of blood and flame and dust. It is not the sort of sound the Pendergasts ought to have been party to in a bathyscope. Sea monsters or not.

“Lion?” Alan yells. “‘S new!”

“Not a lio –!” Scott bellows back, but then the sound cuts off as sudden and as awful as it had begun. On the recording the only sound is the panicked panting of the Pendergasts, the gentle, steady beep of the sonar, and;

“ _Report. Report. Report_.”

“Ya hear that?” Buddy shakes his head, and Ellie pats his arm. “I’ve heard some things in my time – the cry of the Ozarks Howler, a Yowie party but _this_ –” His eyes drop. “Was something else.”

Ellie’s arm wraps around his shoulders, and she turns a pleading expression on Scott.

“There’s something out there, you heard it.”

“Most of New Zealand heard it,” grumbles Alan, dropping down to sit next to Scott. “But – I don’t get it. If you’re looking for sea monsters – maybe you found one?”

John scoffs, but Buddy’s already shaking his head again, his gaze fixed to his feet.

“That’s not the issue,” Ellie insists. “Could be a Kraken, could be a Pleido – either way –”

“I’m sorry.” It’s Virgil’s turn to interrupt, though at least he’s more polite about it than John’s likely to be. “If you’re not calling us about the Sea Monster –”

“Either _way_ ,” Ellie continues, eyebrows pulling together. “Since when do sea monsters ask you to _report_?”

—

“You there yet, mate?”

“I think he means status, Thunderbird Four?”

“No drama, status Gordo?”

Gordon grins down at the twin holograms. John’s arms are tightly folded across his chest, but Buddy’s bouncing on his toes, his eyes bright.

“I’m good, coming up within range now. No sea monsters yet.” Buddy deflates slightly. John rolls his eyes. "Anything on the scans, John?”

“Clean as a whistle, I might find you some nervous clams if you’re –”

“ _MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY KWLF034 KWLF034 KWLF034 POSITION 32.27.46.S 177.38.13.W_.”

The words come again in a steady, heavy monotone. Male, probably. Human, anyway, and John’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline, his hand flying over his equipment as Gordon grabs for the comm. 

“Kilo Whiskey Lima Foxtrot Zero Three Four, this is Thunderbird Four.” He glances briefly at Buddy who’s biting at the skin of his thumb. “Report.”

Static blares through the comm. John scowls. “Nothing! How can –”

“I’m nearly five kilo deep, John. Whatever’s down here is not having a fun– shit!”

The sound is worse down here, down deep in the dark where the only thing Four’s running lights catch on are the rising peaks of underwater mountains. It’s a scream, a shriek of metal and men and the thundering roar of water where there should not be and Gordon ducks, throwing his arms over his head in a frantic attempt to protect himself from – from –

He peers out into the blackness. Four bobs gently in the current, unbothered and untouched. 

“ _Report_ ,” pleads the comm and every hair on the back of his neck stands to attention.

“Nothing’s – What –” He hits the comm, fingers slipping slightly even through the neoprene. “Zero Three Four, state your position!”

“ _Report, LR5_.” Definitely human, definitely scared. “ _LR5? Do you read me?_ ”

Gordon’s nose crinkles, “LR – must be interference. Hang on. John I’m gonna send a pulse you ready?”

“Might as well,” John grumbles. “Nothing else is – Eos! Have you been rearranging the databanks again?”

“Launching Ultra Sonar.” Gordon hopes that John’s too preoccupied with whatever Eos has done to the communication array to notice the way he squeezes his eyes shut before pressing the button. He doesn’t believe in sea monsters – not _Buddy’s_ kind of sea monsters anyway – not any more than he believes in mermaids. 

But there’s something out there. Something loud. Something loud and invisible to human eyes and John alike, and the last surprise the Ultra Sonar turned up had really not ended well for him at all.

Lights flare into life across the dash as the Ultra Sonar sweeps through the crevices, dips down toward the distant trench bottom, and Gordon finds himself holding his breath, waiting, waiting –

“ _MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY KWLF034_ –”

“Roger that Zero Three Four, I am receiving you loud and clear what is your status.”

The static fizzes again, louder, more insistent, and over it, through it, the clang clang clang of what sounds like a hammer against a hull. His hull.

“Jesus _fuck_ what is that? John!”

“I’m getting nothing from here!”

The noise grows louder, closer, and he can feel it through his seat now – any second – any second and it’ll be beneath his feet, right where the running lights reflect his own sheet-white face in the plexiglass.

Until they splutter, stutter. Die away to nothing and the darkness left lit only by the faint, static laden glow of the comm symbol and two pale, watching faces.

The silence is perfect.

The silence is awful.

Buddy opens his mouth; Gordon presses a finger to his lips, and he snaps it shut.

The comm symbol flickers, red to amber.

“Zero Three Four,” Gordon hisses, “God damn –”

“– _ur power evermore whose arm doth reach the ocean floor –_ ” the voice on the comm warbles, unsteady and growing much, much higher. A boy’s voice, almost. Clear of static and as pure as though the singer were sat beside him, and Gordon listens, enthralled, as the running lights flicker back into life.

Or at least, someone’s do. Someone huge and black, rising from beneath him with running lights turned green with age and a hull torn and tattered. Colours not used for a century flying from a mast that hangs limp, a looming blackflashed conn tower where someone – someone still sings.

“Virgil! Virgil I need you now!”

A dozen someones, no, more, two dozen, a hundred, and Thunderbird Four’s engines howl in displeasure as Gordon throws himself backward, heaves himself towards the surface, sweat in his eyes and blood in his mouth and his ears – his ears ringing with a hundred voices, clear and bright and impossible as they beg:

“– _dive with our men beneath the sea_.”

—

Buddy hovers over him, generously letting him finish puking his guts up against the wall of the module before he says anything. He’s good like that. “Not sea monsters, then?”

Gordon shakes his head weakly.

"Not unless season 17 is heading in a very different direction, no.”

Virgil hands him a towel.

“Deep sea pressures can lead to hallucinations, there must be some –”

“Pardon me Virgil mate, but I heard –”

“Me too.” John is quieter than usual, his grip on his arms unusually tight. “There was nothing on the scans but –”

“M-mass hysteria,” Brains concludes, popping out of Virgil’s wrist comm to tut at the state of Four’s post-dive. “It’s the simplest –”

“General quarters.” Gordon doesn’t look at any of them as he wipes his face with a shaking hand. “The hammering – they were calling me to General Quarters.”

“I don’t know –”

“Battlestations,” he rounds on Virgil, panic curdling into anger in the last of the bile he spits onto the ground. “No one – no one came to help them. They wanted me to _help_ them. And I _ran_.”

“Gordon –” 

“You don’t get it!”

“Gordon, I do, I understand but – there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

Buddy and John let out similarly uncertain little noises. Brains presses the heel of his hand into his forehead. Gordon just scowls, and jabs at his comm.

“Kilo Whisky Lima Foxtrot Zero Three Four, do you copy?” The line hangs, Gordon’s fingertips white with the force of pressing it down, the balric shaking under his hand. “Repeat, do you copy? I’m sorry.” It’s a whisper, a plea. “Zero Three Four, stand down. All clear, I repeat. All clear.”

“Gordon, there’s no one –”

It’s different up here. A thin, ready warble. Distant and skittish, as though being played through some ancient radio frequency that skips with every heavy breeze, but it comes all the same. Plays through Gordon’s comm and echoes off the carbon fiber frame of Two, wraps itself around Four’s still dripping nose. 

“ _– keep them safe from peril in the deep_.”

Someone – John – whimpers, but Gordon grits his teeth, stares out at the churning ocean and swears, “Roger that.”


End file.
